lol. I had a guy friend watch this movie with me (one of my favorite movies btw, I love Audrey) and those were the first words out of his mouth when the movie was over.
I thought about the plausibility of it before, but him saying it really made it stick this time. Makes me wonder if the gay vibes to his character were done purposefully. Thoughts?
"yeah he asked me how I was"
"...and you told him?"
Truly idiotic. And even the title of this thread not just gay, but gay as hell. Perhaps that describes your friend. Because it certainly appears that there is a cabal of posters that seems to see hidden homosexuality in every other character in every movie ever made. Thinking that of Higgins also may reflect the perverse notion that anyone over a certain age that doesn't date frequently must be a homo. Or perhaps the strange notion, as enunciated by TV character Archie Bunker, that Great Britain is homosexual culture.
And the silly statement from someone that confirmed bachelor was a code word for a gay man. No the term simply meant exactly what it said. And of course many confirmed bachelors dated frequently, but avoided marriage to avoid the accompanying responsibilities and commitment. If it might have been used to hid something it was probably that certain guys just couldn't attract a woman though they may have very much wanted to.
One could just as easily decide that Higgins is secretly black because he has a nice tan and the reason he is a bachelor is that no white woman would have him. Or perhaps he is Jewish with the proof supposedly being that his life is dominated by intellectual pursuits and his mother is afraid to have him meet her minister.
What this movie is about is the very typical Hollywood plot scenario of two people who have fallen in love, but engage in endless sparring, because neither wants to be the first to admit they have fallen for the other. It wasn't until I started writing this that I came to think that this is really the story of two very flawed people who fear those flaws will prevented their being loved.
Higgins must feel too old for Eliza, the one way in which a man of wealth, accomplishment and intellectual attainment could be wounded by a woman of the 'lower class'. Eliza feels she is considered less desirable because of that membership in her class, lack of education and as we find out her illegitimate birth. She even says at one point, when Colonel Pickering brings up the fact that she may be wed, Gonnnnnnne, who would marry me. She has been abandoned by her mother in one way or another and her father sees her only as a source of revenue and as a commodity to sell. Is it any wonder she has little self esteem. And Higgins may well view all women as empty headed simply because most have rejected him.
But, as in so many Hollywood movies these two emotionally scarred people find each other and seem on their way to a loving relationship.
Higgins and Eliza realize they need one and other and as the movie closes are set to resume a relationship that serves both of their needs. My feeling is that it is only a matter of time until one will break down and admit a feeling of true love for the other. And I'm betting it will be Higgins, as age causes him to imagine the coming lonely years.
mdudnikov, You do know that George Cukor and Cecil Beaton were gay, or don't you accept that either?!?
At least there will be plenty implied.
I lol'd at the line that Higgins must be secretly Jewish because his mother didn't want him to meet her minister. Honestly, the posters on these boards must have one track minds; their gaydar is in overdrive. I see Higgins as a heterosexual man, who might be attracted to women's beauty but, he doesn't like them as people. As far as the female servants, he isn't absolutely repulsed by women not to have them around.
shareAgreed. Higgins would be the first break down and admit that he loves Eliza (romantically).
share[deleted]
Of course he was gay. Not literally gay in the film, but the gay subtext is transparent for those able to de-code it. Cukor was gay and would have known.
And of course Bernard Shaw was gay. The general misogyny in the film derives from this. There's no way Shaw would have let Higgins get together with Eliza at the end.
If you choose to deny it, you're only seeing the surface of the film and you should be asking yourself what else you have been missing because there are many such closeted films (such as Zorba the Greek) because there are many closeted writers and directors - you'd be amazed how many (Hitchcock for one).
Interesting topic.
shareSort of, but I think it's a bit misguided.
Federovsky there thinks Hitchcock was gay, but the man was married for decades, had a child, and lingered his camera over female flesh like it was goin' out of style. I've heard accusations of misogyny levelled at Hitchcock before, but never heard a suggestion he was gay. I suppose if evidence were presented I'd buy it, but here is none.
Shaw, too, has some evidence to the contrary, although at least here there are some who thought him gay.
Rex Harrison's mannerisms would, I think, have read to contemporary British audiences as just "Establishment", or "Upper class", but not necessarily gay. To North American audiences, his manner is just flamboyant enough, I suppose, and I think that's why some might assume Higgins was gay.
For my money, the impression I got when first watching My Fair Lady years ago was that Eliza and Higgins had a bit of the SM thing going on - how else would one explain her interest in returning to such abuse? But, of course, Pygmalion is set up to criticize Higgins and his treatment of Eliza and they, naturally, do not end up together. But I don't think Shaw would disallow that because he was making Higgins out to be Out, but rather about the way he mistreated her and used her. It has nothing to do with his sexuality. Even if it did, I seem to recall similar character motivations, i.e., the story only really works if the Professor isn't gay.
Federovsky, I think, is reading into things a bit much. Maybe that post says more of Federovsky than of Shaw, Hitchcock, or Higgins.
"For my money, the impression I got when first watching My Fair Lady years ago was that Eliza and Higgins had a bit of the SM thing going on - how else would one explain her interest in returning to such abuse?"
Well, accepting that abuse was her only hope of a better life and rising in the world, while planning to get out when and where she can.
So they don't have so much of a domination/submission vibe, as a relationship between a thoughtless bully and someone who was willing to temporarily endure bullying for reasons of her own. Which is why I despise people who say that Eliza and Higgings should have gotten together at the end, and that includes various screenwriters, because the only happy ending for Eliza is to get what she can from Higgins and get away to start her own life! Pity she couldn't find anyone better than Freddie to do it with, but that's also believable, Higgins had placed her in a social strata where her intelligence and ambition were considered undesirable qualities.
Yes, I agree with you there. That's why Shaw basically wrote a thesis on why Eliza/Higgins "shippers" were nicompoops. I have it in the back of my copy of Pygmalion.
I enjoyed My Fair Lady, but it's one of the most tacked-on and preposterous of forced happy endings Hollywood has ever come up with - and that's saying something!
Yes, as-written, Shaw's characters could only either be in a dom/sub state or, as you say, an EXTREMELY unhealthy relationship where she needs him just to survive and he doesn't really love her so much as wants to possess and domineer her. Ugly stuff.
If they wanted the happy ending, they should have softened Higgins earlier in the story and shown more scenes of them falling in love - her with him, specifically - to make it work. As it stands, it's too close to Shaw's original and just flies in the face of his masterful writing.
Again, I like the movie, but the ending doesn't work.
I really don't think that Higgins and Eliza are in anything like a dom/sub state, I think they're openly using each other. He's using her to in an argument, she's using him to better herself, so while they're civil within the bonds of the teacher-pupil relationship, for most of the story they don't even pretend to like each other. Now at the very end he realizes he likes having an apt pupil and someone to bully, and she realizes that maybe she kind of admires his brilliance and is grateful for the opportunity he's given her... but staying on would mean being dependent on a thoughtless bully for the rest of her life. That would mean accepting all the bad things in their relationship, and getting none of the things she'd originally wanted.
That's the thing about movie screenwriters who tacked on the "happy" ending - they expected that the audience wouldn't think about what the "happy" ending meant! Shaw expected that his audiences would, and was horrified that they started shipping two people whose relationship was very unhealthy.
Edit: Funny, the question of whether Higgins is straight or gay has no bearing on any of that. Either way, he's a thoughtless bully who treats her like a toy, and has no sexual interest in her.
I only thought of the dom/sub thing because it's the only other way to explain it, but even that's not backed up by the movie. But, to me, it was the only other way that the relationship would come close to making sense. This was, I think, mostly because the movie clearly "wants" us to like this ending. The ending is (I don't think) intended to play out as you suggest (sensibly) that this is a reluctant, forced exchange of Eliza's freedom for the only possible path: to remain with a bully. I think the writers/director of the film want the audience to be happy that true love won out in the end and they really do love each other. It just doesn't make any darn sense.
Yeah, Shaw was really horrified by people doing that. It's probably how Orwell would feel if he saw the way people chuck his eponymadjective around all over the place. I'm also reminded of a line from Hannah and Her Sisters: "If Jesus came back today and saw what was going on in his name, He'd never stop throwing up."
You're right: Higgins might still be gay. Again, I don't think he is. But his torturing of Eliza could be done without any sexual interest at all.
There are those who believe that Higgins is indeed gay as hell. I mean the man dislikes women except for his mother, treats the attractive Eliza like a toy, he and Pickering live together and act like an old married couple even though they met in Act 1, and at the end he offers to let Eliza live there as one of "three old bachelors", etc.
All I can say is that author GB Shaw did not *intend* Higgins to be gay, he wrote a bit about the man in one of his famous ranting introduction to the play and went on and on about how Mrs. Higgins was so elegant and had made such a lovely home that for Prof. Higgins no other woman could measure up... as if heterosexual men normally put a higher priority on lovely home than hormonal attraction! But then, Shaw himself was far from a typical heterosexual male, so much so that there are still people arguing about his orientation.
He really reminds me of those misogynistic dudes you see on the internet. They think so little of Women they swing all the way to quasi-homosexuality.
Why can't a Woman be more like a Man?